CES has had plenty of coverage and one of the biggest trends were the throngs of eReaders announced. It seemed that they were every where. Prior to CES 2010 we had the big players; Amazon, Sony, and Barnes and Noble. But now you have all kinds of choices for E Ink devices. Or do you?
We have had a Sony eReader in the family for some time and we have been very happy with it. No it doesn’t have wireless but we seem to be able to plan our purchases and load the eReader up without it being an issue. For Christmas we decided to purchase another eReader as a gift. I personally don’t care for the Kindle and we were very interested in the Nook. The intended recipient might be able to take advantage of the wifi and wireless built into the Nook. I was also open to it because according to the Nook specs it supported ePub and Sony had just announced their support of ePub. That sounded open and great, not closed like the Kindle.
We purchased some gift cards from Barnes and Noble in anticipation of getting a Nook and then the delays. More delays and no review units. So we got “cold” feet and purchased another Sony. The recipient could still use the gift cards to purchase eBooks from the Barnes and Noble store but then load them on the Sony. ePub is ePub right?
Wrong. Christmas came and eBooks in ePub format were purchased from Barnes and Noble. To our surprise they couldn’t be read by the Sony eReader. We tried Calibre to load them on the Sony but any attempt to read the books resulted in an authorization error. Doing some searching on the web resulted in utter disappointment, B&N put DRM on their ePub books. So even though there was an “open” standard each eBook store seems to DRM their content.
I was furious and now the recipient of the Sony eReader couldn’t even use it with the eBooks that were purchased. I didn’t give up, as with any DRM usually somebody figures out a way around it. I found some PHP code here that strips out the DRM. Sure enough, after running it on each eBook I was then able to sync it to the Sony eReader and read them without error. Obviously not something a casual user would want to go through just for the right of reading something they legally purchased.
So now we have all of these eReaders out there, most of which all have their own content deals. Most of which can’t read other store’s content. Which is really what it comes down to, the content deals. It would be so much better to be able to purchase an eBook from anyone and use it on any eReader device. Like mp3’s that’s what ePub should be.
After this experience I had to wonder just how many of the eReaders from CES 2010 would actually make it to market, without content deals they would be virtually useless. Until the manufacturers and content providers figure this out “Caveat emptor” because you could get a great device and end up with nothing to read.
